


If Only We Could Wake Up Soon and Scream

by illwynd



Category: Norse Mythology, Thor (2011)
Genre: Blindness, F/M, Horror, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-26
Updated: 2011-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Loki is chained in the cave, everyone expects that he will eventually escape. What if, instead, he gives up?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt (http://norsekink.livejournal.com/6119.html?thread=10231783) at the norsekink LJ comm. Title is from a Sonata Arctica song.

**1\. Cornea**

They intended it as torture. When they first chained him, when the first drops of the snake’s venom burned against his forehead, he screamed and thrashed and cried—but only for their benefit, Odin and Thor, Frigga and Sif, all the rest, so they could never claim they did not know. As soon as they departed, Loki grinned up at Sigyn beneath the bowl held in her slender arms. As stunned as he was by what had been done to him, he reminded himself that he had survived every hurt they had dealt him before, and he would survive this. It was, he thought, only a temporary discomfort, and when he regained his freedom he would use the memory of this to make the next trick he played upon the Aesir all the sweeter. Next time, he thought, both Odin and Thor would deserve his tender attentions. When Sigyn returned his gaze with a quivering smile, he knew she was telling herself to be strong for him, and he laughed softly for the both of them. For a hundred years, his laughter would protect them.

For a hundred years, they would be protected by his irrepressible laughter, his lighthearted words even when Sigyn wept. By the end of that time, the venom had worn these away into brittle things and shattered them with a touch.

The first night, though, they wept together and smiled softly at each other and insisted that they would escape this. Sigyn held her bowl, vigilant and protective. Loki stretched gently at his hideous chains.

That was how it began.

0o0

 

 **2\. Anterior chamber**

He occasionally thought of how some of the Aesir claimed that they only chained him there so as to prevent further “mischief” of the sort that left gods dead and light darkened. It was a lie crueler than ever he had told. Of course it was meant to hurt him. They intended it as torture, and after a century had passed he began to struggle in earnest, no longer the calculated twisting and tugging of his limbs that he had thought would allow him eventually to escape but simply a desperate, involuntary motion; a painful jolting twitch as each drop hit.

And then the pain grew worse. The snake dripped its venom on his skin and into his eyes whenever Sigyn moved away with her bowl. It burned. It stung. Each drop seared his lids and crawled between them, along the moist surface of his eye, bringing up tears that could do nothing to wash away the burn. He tossed his head to evade the drops, bashing it against the stone in his agony, but the snake swayed in time above him, its tongue flicking out into the air to taste his delirium. Sometimes it made him frantic to stare up at the bottom of the bowl and know what waited. Sometimes he was glad his hands were not free or else he might have grabbed it and hurled it away, believing the anticipation was the greater pain. But soon enough the venom would drip into his eyes again, like needles, like knives, and he would writhe. Convulse. Every muscle contracted in the need to get away, leaving him exhausted and covered in sweat when Sigyn returned.

Once or twice Odin came to gloat over him. At first Loki bit his tongue, blinked away the film from his eyes and felt them healing, healing just enough that he could see the grey, grim face staring back at him. Odin even spoke to him, saying things that Loki found easy to ignore, promises and evasions and the sort of deception that he knew to expect from the Allfather. But then Sigyn shifted, stood, carried her bowl carefully to the edge. Agony came, blurring Odin’s image as all faded into darkness. And then Loki’s mouth opened and a scream of curses poured forth. One for every cunning word, and after a while he was cursing Odin for things he was not sure had ever happened. They may as well have, he supposed, and he laughed and promised Ragnarok in the midst of his pleas and hatred. Whatever wisdom pain gave, it gave to Loki in twisted form.

Odin turned his back and left without another glance, just as he had after he tied the bonds that held Loki to the stone. Loki thrashed and felt the earth move under him.

 

0o0

 **3\. Pupil**

But after a while even the pain grew dim, and he crossed through it into darkness around the third century of his imprisonment. It was an empty darkness, and one in which he had no use for words. Nothing more passed his lips than animal groans and whimpering breaths when he could no longer hold them back. He had long since left hunger and thirst behind, long since stopped feeling the constriction of his bindings or the jagged misery of his stone bed. There was a web of haze aching in the center of his forehead right behind his eyes. He left them closed (or felt them to be closed) most of the time. The light was dim in the cave anyway. There was little to see.

Sometimes he heard Sigyn murmuring and muttering to herself or humming something that reminded him of a lullaby. But she had given up trying to get him to speak, and she had given up the game of talking into his silence. He swallowed around the thick, dry feeling in his throat.

Sometimes he was aware of what was happening to him. Sometimes he was aware that the darkness might never recede again, that he no longer thought about what he would do when he escaped, that he could not remember what it was like to exist without hurting. That he could not remember what it was like to walk free in the world. When he became aware of these things, he would struggle against his chains in a cold panic until tears ran down his face and the pain behind his eyes grew hot and bright, a single point of light burning away his thoughts, leaving behind an emptiness that was no solace at all.

 

0o0

 **4\. Puncta Lacrimalia**

It was torture.

If it were not torture, there would be no venom, there would be different chains, and Sigyn would not be bound here with him. Some claimed that allowing her to accompany him was a mercy, she with her bowl, so faithful, so loyal. But even had their partnership been a perfect one, this would have destroyed it. He had stopped looking at her even before the venom made it impossible, but she did not let him forget her presence. She held the bowl over his face and sometimes she sat close enough that he could feel the heat of her body and could even feel her breath on his skin. It brushed, humid and cold, against the splashes of venom on his cheeks and the places where it pooled in the corners of his eyes like blood-tinged tears.

“My husband,” she whispered, and her voice rattled like a dry husk, and she didn’t say what it was she thought about him. She didn’t even say his name.

Sometimes he would feel her moving near him and then he would feel her caressing the tethers that bound him to the rock, whispering words of sorrow and grief to their murdered son. She was careful; her hands never even brushed his skin.

Once, though, she startled him and he felt wet drops falling on his face. He hissed and winced before he realized—the drops landed on flesh where the skin had been burned away and never healed, a slick surface of raw red flesh that he dared not envision—that these gentle drops contained little more than salt-sting. Then he heard it. She was sobbing. An ugly, choked sound, her face close enough to his to drip tears on him, despite holding the bowl above them.

Or perhaps she no longer held it, for she whimpered in pain as she pressed her cheek against his, and as her lips dragged through moisture, sliding up to kiss beneath his eyes. He felt the rasp of her mouth against the tender, wounded skin there, tasting him. As if she were consuming him. As if the half-dead tissues could be saved that way.

It was the last time she ever touched him, as far as he could remember.

 

0o0

 **5\. Lens**

Another century passed. No one came to spy on their torment, and Sigyn sat listless at the edge of the chasm that surrounded their cave ledge. (He followed her movements by the echo of her steps and the sound of her breathing; he had become skilled at that.) She was encouraged in this neglect by the way he only lay limp and unresponsive as the snake’s venom ran down his temples, eating a path along the pale skin to the curve of his ear, and fell to sizzle on the rock beneath his head. He saw no point in struggling. It would make no difference in the end.

Instead he listened. In the silence, in the dark, he could hear so many things. He felt he had never noticed how much there was to hear. Distant water dripping into an underground stream. The scales of the snake above shifting slightly against the rock outcropping. The faint rumblings of the deep, slow movements of rock. He thought he could even hear the whisper of roots growing into the soil far above him. And all these sounds came together to make voices. One voice that growled and whimpered and screamed. One voice that crackled like fire and shrieked like wind and groaned like ice.

 _Narfi_ , it said. _Vali. Angrboda. Balder._

The voice gurgled like a sucking chest wound and hissed like a burned body and whined like a beaten dog. And it had been so long since he had heard a voice speaking aloud to him that he clung to it, desperately.

He was here because of them. For them. For their vengeance upon him. Because he could give them nothing else, he would give them his suffering, and the world would speak their names to him through it. It would be all he had. It was all he wanted.

In the darkness, everything was suddenly clear. And it was beautiful.

 

0o0

 **6\. Vitreous body**

But he was not a creature made for regret and repentance. And the sense of purpose, the warm rush of feeling his flesh dissolving in the name of those he loved and those he had brought death to… over the years that brief bliss dulled, as the pain had dulled, as all feeling dulled.

He was distantly aware that his body had gone so weak that he could have moved only by a great force of will. His muscles were atrophied, his flesh thin and slack from centuries without sustenance. Even his blood flowed sluggishly after all that time without so much as a sip of water in his mouth. It did not matter. His body was a useless thing, and it no longer mattered to him.

His mind drifted. He drifted through the moments of his life—his mother’s fond-eyed gaze at his laughter over some clever trick in childhood, the shattered, glinting edge of the Bifrost above his head, the spear in Hodur’s hand as he guided it, and the feel of Thor’s arm around his shoulders, holding him back as he screamed while Narfi’s blood poured out of his ripped belly. He drifted through the moments of his life and saw them lead him inexorably to that cave. He felt each moment looming over him like a thundercloud, too big for even him to fight. It all led to darkness and pain, a cave and a snake, the stagnant scent of sour skin and wet earth and decay filling his lungs. And knowing that the foretelling of Ragnarok was a lie, because he would never be able to free himself.

 

0o0

 **7\. Retinal vessels**

Along with all other comfort, sleep was something lost to him. But though he was adrift in a deeper darkness, sometimes nightmares came to him still. He emerged from one gagging, his mouth full of blood, new pain searing across the deep rend his teeth had made in his tongue. He could not bear to swallow; he let the blood run out of the corners of his mouth. The sound it made, the wet bubbling of breath and blood, made him feel ill. And it was made worse by the memory of the nightmare.

 _He had escaped from his bonds. Left Narfi’s entrails curled on the floor, left Sigyn’s pitiful shape hunched there in their cave, and he fled. His bare feet were soon torn and bleeding as he passed over rock and through brambles, but he could not make himself stop. All his nightmares began the same, though what came next went in various ways. But he always fled toward Niflheim, toward Hel, toward the only person who might be able to help him._

 _Hela, his daughter, his only living child in As form. She would not betray him. She was near as powerful as he. But there was a reason more vital than that: he could bear the thought of entrusting no one with his weakness, his helplessness. Except perhaps for her, who he had protected in her infancy and guided in his own way when she was still too small to care for herself. He would go to her, she would take him in and give him refuge until he found a way to survive. In his blindness, he needed that more than any vengeance. One person to trust not to harm him or humiliate him._

 _But the Aesir did not understand that. Did not know that. Saw his flight to Hel and assumed the worst, as they always did where he was concerned. They found him, caught him, surrounded him, and once again trapped him._

 _He could not see to know which direction to run, so he picked one at random, laying all his chances on his luck and the fleetness of his feet. He should have known better; only one of the two had ever been reliable. He ran directly into something solid, felt hands grasping his arms, and he knew without knowing how he knew… that it was Thor._

 _“Brother,” he begged, “you don’t understand. I wasn’t going to…”_

 _“Trickster,” Thor growled, shaking him until his bones rattled._

 _“You will not lie to us again, Loki,” Odin said, very calm and very near. “You will not escape your punishment.”_

 _Loki stiffened, twisted in Thor’s grip, thrashed, bucked, panicked. He begged and pleaded. He knew what they meant to do to him. He knew even before Odin told him of the demands of the rest of the Aesir—each thing they demanded be stripped from him._

 _“No,” he pleaded, turning to where he thought Thor stood, “kill me before that!”_

 _And he felt a large, warm hand against the side of his face, unexpectedly tender. “But then we would have to watch you die,” Thor whispered._

 _He begged them not to do it, not to leave him so helpless, so unable to defend himself. He begged them to let him die instead. His pleas did not cease as they broke his bones and cut his tendons and severed his nerves. His pleas did not cease until, as a final theft, they took his tongue._

When the nightmare faded and he came back to himself, he was still choking on the taste of blood.

 

0o0

 **8\. Macula**

There was a rumbling sound, a dinning tap, a deep groan like boulders being shoved against one another. A sound that hadn’t been heard in Loki’s cave since he stopped struggling centuries before, and he did not immediately realized what it meant. By the time he understood, there was a new commotion rising in echoes on the far side of the space. Footsteps, the slap of steadying hands on the stone walls, the rustle of garments and bodies. And the sounds of Sigyn scrambling to her feet, trying to force her unused voice out of her throat. Finally she managed a low sound that built to a wail, and Loki heard the sound of fists against flesh, hitting in an uncoordinated flurry. Then she stopped.

In the silence that came after, Loki became aware that he was being looked at by people standing over him.

“Father, _let him out_ ,” Thor demanded suddenly, sounding alarmed enough that it almost made Loki smile. An old reflex.

Odin did what was asked of him. The bonds fell away.

Loki sprang to his feet, leapt over their heads, and flew out into the sunlight, feeling it restore… no.

No, he didn’t.

He felt himself instead being lifted bodily from the stone, and the one hissing air through their teeth was not him, nor was he the one gasping and holding back a cry of horror. He couldn’t. He was not able to move at all, even his pained exhalations no more than a wheeze.

“I am sorry it went so far. I am sorry we did not come sooner,” he heard Odin say in a low breath. “I did not foresee…”

But Loki knew the apology was more for Thor’s benefit than his. What good did Odin’s apologies do him?

And he stopped caring about Odin’s words when he realized what they were doing. They were taking him home. Back to Asgard. He was too weak to protest, but his heart pounded faster and sweat sprang up on his skin and maybe he made some small sound. Thor’s arms tightened around him.

“I think he is…” Thor said, trailing off, unable to complete the thought, and Loki felt himself being shifted, moved. Felt Odin’s hand pressing to his brow.

“Give him to me,” Odin said after a moment. “I will carry him.”

 

0o0


	2. Chapter 2

**9\. Choroid**

They took him back to Asgard by pathways that he had once traveled alone and now recognized by the feel of strange air on his skin. Secret pathways. If he had not already been sure of it, this would have told him without a doubt that they were not bringing him back to the open-armed welcome of all of Asgard.

They carried him along empty corridors that echoed with distant shuffling and mutterings, through halls in which the sense of high ceilings and broad expanses made him feel as if he were falling, past immense creaking doors that guards in clinking mail pulled open without saying a word. They carried him through closer spaces in which the air seemed tinged with wood-smoke and subtler odors, sharp and sour and layered with decay. At one point he felt Odin drawing his own cloak around Loki’s body as if to hide them both from prying eyes.

And with each slow and jarring step, the terror grew. With each distant cry or nearby scraping rustle, a jolt of fear flayed him. They were taking him home. They were taking him, helpless and weak, to a place where he would be faced with enemies he could no longer evade and where he would be surrounded by the subtler hostility of each person who would gladly have watched him die even if they didn’t wish to wield the knife themselves. And he would face that in an endless darkness, and with the knowledge that he had no one to whom he could turn.

They passed through another corridor, and he heard a sudden burst of noise, much nearer, as if they had gone by an entranceway just slightly open. And he suddenly recognized that noise, and knew they had reached their destination. It was the sound of a mead hall in full swing of a feast night. Odors of roasted boar and duck reached him, along with the smell of spilled ale, the rough songs of drunken warriors, the laughter of inebriated maidens, the clanking of shields slung over backs and swords dangling from belts, the reverberating thumps of mugs on countless heavy tables.

Thor’s broad palm swiped terror-sweat from Loki’s brow as he began to squirm, still too weak for words.

“Quickly,” murmured Odin.

And then they were past and entering another space—quiet, cool, and calm. In whispered transactions, he was entrusted to the healers to be brought back to whatever strength and health was within their power, to have his wounds tended, to be guided as he regained the strength to care for himself. To be hidden away until he was not such easy prey.

It was Odin still who carried him to the room that would be his during his recovery. He could feel the small dimensions of it, could smell a clinging aura of illness, could hear the rustle of the nighttime wind from a high window. Soon he was alone there; Odin and Thor left after only a few minutes, and Loki noted that neither tried to comfort him with reassurances.

The healer who took their place at the bedside plied him with nourishing fluids laced with the juice of Idunn’s apples, holding the cup to his lips and letting him take only the smallest of sips at first; with such help, the woman said, he would be on his feet again within days. But soon she as well left him there alone, telling him to sleep.

It was his first night back in Asgard, and he spent it starting at every unfamiliar sensation and every sudden sound, trying to rid himself of the tremble that had taken hold of him all over, fighting against the urge to scream. If he let his teeth part so decisively, surely they would come to take his tongue as well.

0o0

As the first day dawned he lay resting, his body aching from the unaccustomed softness of the bed, his mind doubting every sensation that told him he was no longer in the cave. With his hands freed at last, they repeatedly raised of their own accord, lifting to his face, touching what he could not see.

The skin around his eyes was scar-slick and pitted, paths worn into it like tear-tracks. His fingertips crept along, feeling the slope, ignoring the twinges of pain from sensitized nerves. They moved onward, delving deeper. Where his eyelids should have been, there was no convex curve. He traced the line of the orbit, delicately. Empty. It was practically bare bone.

He began to breathe faster, and he covered his face tightly with both hands, feeling every inch of its shape under his palms, and some shadow of old vanity laughed at the thought of how he would now blight Asgard’s beauty with his ugliness.

In the next moment he had heard someone coming into the room. He froze. But he knew her by her perfume, the scent of a particular flower rare in Asgard’s gardens.

“Mother,” he said in a whisper. He had longed for the comfort of her love, the protection of her presence. But, of course, that had not saved him last time.

“My son… I am so sorry.” She had put a hand to his shoulder, felt the faint tremble there, hesitated before squeezing more firmly.

When it had all happened, when he had been captured and his punishment for the death of Balder dealt out, Frigga had stood by. She had wept, she had clenched her fists tightly at her sides as if she wanted to tear _someone_ limb from limb, but that was all.

Loki smiled in her direction. “It’s all right, Mother. It’s over now. It’s over.”

He held his secrets behind his teeth tightly enough that only lies could slip through, and he wondered what she saw when she looked at him.

Instead of answering, she put her arms around him and held him, and her hands stroked down his hair, seeming to reassure herself that he was there and alive. He let her, his chin to her shoulder, his hands rising weakly to embrace her as well, but instead of warmth it spread only loss and emptiness inside him.

0o0

In the days that followed, it seemed word of his return was passed like a rumor, carefully, from hand to hand.

On the second day Sif came, and he almost did not recognize her footsteps. She pushed the door open and stepped through it slowly with none of the smooth, confident stride he remembered.

Without a word she sat down in the chair beside the bed, and for longer than he would have anticipated she sat in silence. By the time she started speaking—haltingly, uncomfortable and apologetic but trying to pretend that this was nothing more than a visit to an injured friend—he was no longer paying attention. Her voice was a hum in the background of his thoughts, a rising and falling contour of sound carrying him back to familiar and long-lost places.

“Sif,” he said, interrupting after several minutes, pleading as he leaned weakly against the head of the bed. “Will you let me touch your hair? I would like to…”

She had fallen silent then and come closer to him, taking his hands in hers and bringing them to the silken strands that flowed over her shoulders.

He wrapped it around his fingers, stroking it, feeling its softness and remembering its dark gleam. He rubbed it between his palms. He bent close enough to press the smooth locks to his lips—and there, a scent of metal and herbs and leather, of blood and ash and the faintest hint of flowers. If he were still able to weep, he would have. As it was, his face twisted into a grimace and his throat swelled, and suddenly Sif’s quiet breaths as well were choked snuffles and her fingertips were against his cheek and he was dipping his head to evade the touch without releasing his grasp on her hair.

She whispered his name, over and over, as he drifted through longing and memory and grief on the waves of her hair.

0o0

It was late on the third day when more visitors stepped through his door, and they arrived just in time to watch as he weakly, shakily allowed himself to be coaxed onto his feet for the first time. He stood there wobbling, feeling suddenly dizzy, a healer’s assistant on either side of him with hands under his shoulders to help him stay upright. The wave of dismay at knowing that this scene was watched by someone—or rather a small group of someones who had not even had the decency to announce their arrival, though he knew who they were perfectly well—flushed his face with heat and made a sudden rage burn through his veins. He could feel their gazes, pitying and curious at once.

He waited until the assistants had led him through a handful of steps to the table and chairs on the far side of the room and let him sink into one, pulling the thick, warm robe tight around his shoulders with one hand and nodding to let the assistants know they were done for the time being.

“My friends,” he said, forcing a smile. “Well, it’s been so long since we’ve _seen_ one another, hasn’t it? You must sit down and tell me of all that has been missed in my absence.”

The smile spread and became more vicious as they took up places around the room and began making inane small-talk. He had forgotten just how little he liked them, just how much their friendship had always been an illusion. Nonetheless he propped his chin on one hand and listened to Fandral’s vapid tales and Volstagg’s dull bluster, both trying to cover the nervousness they felt. Of course, Hogun said nothing, and this was practically as annoying.

“Hogun, I’m afraid it will do you little good to glare in my direction now. I’ll hardly know you’re there,” Loki sneered after a few minutes had passed without a word from that side of the room.

“Ah, Hogun’s just the same as he’s always been, Loki. No harm meant, I’m sure,” Volstagg boomed, the uncertainty coming through in his laugh.

“I’m sure he is. All of Asgard is just the same as it has always been. Just the same as I remember. And you have no idea what a rebuke that is,” Loki replied. And he felt the poison… _venom_ … building up behind his teeth. Felt the burn of it on his tongue. “It is a great comfort to realize that as I suffered, the dashing Fandral preened and bedded willing maids as he has always done, and the voluminous Volstagg stuffed his face with dainties as he has always done, and the grim Hogun sat around appearing stern and obdurate as he has always done. I am of course grateful that you think to visit me now, to see for yourselves what has become of vile Loki after all these years. Spare yourselves the effort next time, though. You have seen now; surely you have gawked enough to grasp the idea that I clearly won’t be accompanying my brother on any more adventures. You needn’t pretend to be disappointed.”

By the time he finished, they were fleeing and he was sure they would not bother to return, and he breathed a sigh of relief with fury still twisting the edge of his lips. Even if they had never done more than stand there in the doorway as he tried to walk, wishing he could curse and scream and cry over the injustice and the indignity of being made feeble, made weak, made incapable of defending himself or even putting one foot in front of the other… even if for nothing more than that, he would hate them. But he had so much more to hate them for.

After a moment’s respite he struggled to his feet; he had exhausted himself but could not bear the thought of calling for help to reach the bed not a handful of steps away. With the same humiliation and rage burning white-hot in the center of his chest, he pushed himself along the wall, making his legs hold him up for just long enough before he collapsed to the bed, breathing heavy and harsh.

0o0

The fourth day, feeling stronger in body but still shaky in his soul, he forced himself to go walking—already he was well enough for it, though it seemed too quick, a recovery that might have seemed too fast had it lasted a hundred years. He had to go, though, before the terror could freeze him where he was. He had already had wandering daydreams (he still found sleep impossible, though he lay through the nights in motionless silence to satisfy the healers) in which he barricaded himself in this small room and refused ever to leave or to see another living thing, lying on the bed and feeling empty and bereft, robbed of the companions of snake, of venom, of pain. And he had thought of doing it, if only to escape having to walk in Asgard. It would be better to walk blind in Muspelheim, where a misstep would bring only burns. But walk in Asgard he would.

He got slowly to his feet and found the staff the healers had left by the table for him to use as a cane, and found the long silken bandage laid over its end, an unmentioned hint. Taking a deep breath, he crumpled the soft fabric in his hand and let it fall to the floor. He would not. They would see him. It was their own work, after all.

He slipped through the door and wove along the hallway until he found his way out. From there he tapped his way along the corridors. He moved with cautious steps; he remembered every step, every turn, every crack in the stone and that simply made it worse, because his body longed for the unhesitant strides he took across those floors so many years before, but he did not dare take them now.

Every now and then, others would cross his path, their steps slowing to a halt as they saw him. Watching. Wary of the gaunt shadow with its bowed head and its silence, staff held in the crook of one arm. The realization nearly made the pressed line of his mouth split into a lunatic grin. They had tortured and blinded him, and still they treated him as a dangerous beast. As if they had not given him far more reason to cringe away from them.

After a moment they generally hurried in the other direction, but some did not. Those neither greeted him nor spat at him; a further few followed at a distance as he moved away again, and when he heard their footsteps in echo of his own he swallowed hard around a pounding heart, twin sensations weaving up from his fingertips. The itch of his slowly returning magic. The tremble of fear. They twined together in the pit of his stomach into something unnamable. And he imagined what he might do if those hidden things in him were allowed to surface.

As he turned a corner, a voice rang out from the end of the corridor before him as the following footsteps likewise resounded. “I was going to bring you this, Scarlip, but I see you have no need of it.” It was not a voice he recognized.

He heard the sound of wood knocking against the floor.

“No, you should give it to him anyway, I think,” said a second unknown voice from behind his back. The strangers approached, and he counted three sets of footsteps.

Loki let a puzzled smile play on his lips, grateful for years of practice at concealing his true thoughts. “I’m sorry? I don’t think I recall your voices. Have we met?”

“Come now, of course you remember us. We were friends with Hodur. In fact, this is a gift from him. I’m sure he’d have wanted you to have it,” said the first voice again.

Loki’s fingers curled around the cane that was suddenly thrust into his hand. Or rather, the spear. He steeled himself. “Whatever you want from me,” he said, “I am in little position to give it.”

“Oh,” said the second voice, dripping with menace. “I wouldn’t exactly say _that_ …”

And Loki was not fool enough that he did not know what that meant. He did not pause to confirm it. He ducked and ran. Tried to remember where to take the turn. Where the pillars were. Arms pushed out in front of himself he ran, stumbling every few steps and only narrowly avoiding falling on his face. His heart was pounding too loudly to hear if anyone followed. Then before he knew what was happening he was skidding across the smooth stone, tumbling hard onto his knees, rolling and slamming up against a wall, hitting with nauseating force. And then, although his head spun and he no longer knew which direction he was facing, he managed to get to his feet again, knowing that if he were caught on the ground he would have no chance at all. He stood hunched over, clenched fists in front of his face, waiting for the inevitable blows, feeling the tense curls of magic in his hands and forcing them back into his core. He waited. Moments passed. Then longer. His breathing slowed and he became aware of an ache that would turn into bruises along his whole left side.

“Loki?” Thor’s voice cut through his panic, spread like ink in clear water, and suddenly Thor was beside him. Thor, who had captured him and brought him before the Allfather for punishment, brought him to the cave and the dark. Thor, steadying him, hand against his back, worried.

Loki straightened.

“Loki, what happened?”

“Take me somewhere else, brother,” he said, not bothering to answer the question. If Thor could not guess, Loki would not explain. “I want to feel the open air. I want to feel the honest soil under my feet. I want to feel the sun on my face. Take me somewhere that I can.”

A little while later, he was seated before Thor on a horse as they rode out into the fields, leaning back against him. There was a scent of rain in the air and thunder rumbled and rolled across the sky.

Thor spoke to him even as they rode, his breath warm on Loki’s cheek. “I have to confess something to you, Loki,” he said, though he did not sound half as apologetic as everyone else who spoke to him—it was nearly refreshing. “In the early years of your punishment, the feel of your earthquakes made me happy. They reminded me of you. Your tricks and the destructiveness of your chaos. Those earthquakes always came at the worst possible moment, also; it would have amused you. And they let me know you still lived.”

“And when they stopped?”

They pounded across the grassy fields in silence for so long Loki was sure Thor did not intend to answer. Thor radiated anger; the thunder rumbled louder. Then Thor’s arms shifted against Loki’s sides as he twitched the reins, and their mount slowed.

“When they stopped, when it became clear that there would be no more, I went to Odin and demanded that we retrieve you. Or at least find out what had happened. But I am not the Allfather, I have been told, and I am not the ruler of Asgard.”

“I suppose you’re not,” Loki said, the first touch of a genuine smile on his lips in longer than he could remember.

“And the entrance to the cave had been hidden.” Thor’s hand lifted to wrap around his brother in a loose embrace. “I would have come otherwise.”

Loki leaned his head back briefly against Thor’s shoulder. He could indeed feel the sunlight on his face, even though the breeze was nearly cold; the sun must have been wreathed in clouds, but he thought he could almost tell the hour by the warmth of it. He felt the slow steps of the horse beneath them. Could hear the whistle and call of birds, the scrape and chatter of small wild creatures. Could smell the soil and the sun-blanched grasses and the dark, wet odor of leaf-mould lying thick under trees. “So where are we?”

“Just at the edge of the forest,” Thor answered.

“Hm,” Loki said. And together they slung themselves down from the saddle.

Feeling his way across the uneven ground with shuffling steps, Loki wandered, his arms folded loosely across his chest. He knew Thor was only a few paces behind him, giving him space but staying near enough to rush to his aid. If Thor knew how many times Loki had cursed his name as he writhed in pain in the cave… he would probably still have been there. A shiver of inexplicable grief crawled along Loki’s bent back.

Abruptly, he sank to his knees, pressing his palms against the damp ground, head tilted. “I never thought I would be able to… I was sure I’d never be free again,” he said. _And even if I had dreamed of it, I’d never have imagined it like this_ , his thought added. The grass crunched under his hands and the earth seemed soft, and he felt the faintest hint of a tremor, though he wasn’t sure whether it came from below or from within.

When they returned later, he tried to carry that feeling with him—the feeling of solid ground under his hands and free air stirring in his hair, and Thor kneeling silent beside him, not questioning, simply waiting until he was ready to stand again.

0o0

 **10\. Optic Nerve**

The fifth day, it was still early morning when Odin came to him, and Loki still lay on his back on the bed, arms spread above his head, ankles dangling over the edges of the mattress—an unconscious imitation of the posture in which he had spent so many years. At the tap on the door he sat up smoothly, folding his legs under him and straightening his back before he murmured assent for whoever it was to enter. The door opened to Odin’s firm footfalls approaching close without hesitation or apology.

“If your magic has returned, I will lend you my aid to give you some sort of sight again,” he said.

“It hasn’t,” Loki lied, emotionless. “And even you cannot create something from nothing.”

There was a brief pause in which Loki imagined Odin was nodding to himself in that thoughtful way. Loki was determined not to be the one to break the silence. Odin would not have come if he didn’t have something to say. Let him say it and be gone, Loki thought.

The quiet stretched; out in the hall the soft sounds of people passing to and fro about their business went on while Loki sat utterly still, feeling the Allfather’s slow steps back and forth in front of the bed by the air currents. At last Odin sat next to him.

“Do you not have any questions you would like to ask of me?” he said.

“Questions?” Loki mused, turning his ravaged face toward the Allfather. “Nay, no questions. I have far more than that. I have what grows in the rot of questions. I have what is born from their emptiness. Do you know about the voices under the earth, and the names they speak? Do you know about the whispers of the roots of Yggdrasil as they grow? Do you know the feeling of realizing that you have seen the very last thing you would ever see and you cannot remember what it was? And can you imagine what it is to be released from that at last, when it is too late and everything has been lost?”

“Not everything. You are still alive; much can be salvaged. You are not the first to be blinded.”

Loki felt struck dumb, felt like he was drowning. He groped out toward the Allfather with both hands, took hold of the fabric of his robe, desperate and pleading. When he heard himself speak again, his voice was hollow as cracked glass. “How could you do that to me? How could you leave me there when you knew? You knew what was happening! _Why_ did you do that to me?”

“Because you were a danger to us all, Loki,” he said, and for the first time Loki heard something like true sorrow in it. “Many believe you are still a danger, and even a king cannot go wholly against such whisperings.”

Loki stayed silent, his hands still painfully tight on the hem of Odin’s sleeve.

Odin continued, “I do not think you would be saved by escaping from Asgard. I do not know the answer, but I will do whatever is possible to protect you while I can.” The words seemed cold, but the voice held something that made Loki listen. The tones, long buried, of the wanderer, not the warrior or the king. The quiet undertone of respect filling the distance between them.

That night Loki spent in thought, listening to the distant echoes of water flowing in underground streams. He could still escape. He had regained enough strength, he had learned how to make his way through the world without sight well enough. And from the warning of the nightmares of the cave, he knew better than to run to Hel. He could go to Midgard instead, lose himself among the mortals, or to Alfheim, or the empty wastes of Jotunheim…

By morning he had decided that he would stay, to face whatever came. He remembered what Odin had said, and he understood it. He would not leave.

0o0

It was not until the sixth day that Sigyn came to him; he knew that she had followed them out of the cave, stumbling along in the wake of the Allfather and the Thunderer as best she could. He knew that she had come also to the healers to be treated for the effects of years of deprivation and misery and madness, and that she had been given a room not far from his. And he could not blame her a bit for staying away. She had already been bound to his torment for far too long.

But she came to him regardless at midday of the sixth day, and he imagined she chose the hour for the cheery brightness of the sunlight he could feel streaming into the room. He recognized her by the soft slip of her footsteps as she entered the room without waiting for his word.

“Hello, husband,” she said, taking his hand in hers and stroking her fingers along his knuckles. He squeezed back.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“We are both alive.” There was a breathy edge to her voice, a hint of the same husk-dry thinness that had been there the last time she spoke to him in the cave.

“Yes.” Of course they both bore scars.

They spoke little after that. They would not speak of the cave, or of the past. They could hardly speak of the future. But her hand was warm on his.

At one point, he drew her closer to him until he felt the nearness of her body, and he leaned to whisper in her ear, begging a promise from her. He smiled as he felt her nod, slow and hesitant.

When she left minutes later, he was satisfied. The promise released her from older obligations. She was bound to him no longer and she would not reproach herself for whatever came next. He had freed them from each other. Freed her from the burden of him.

That night, for the first time in years, Loki slept. And he dreamed. One dream was a pleasant one in which he and everyone he loved were together, and he drank a mead that tasted of sunlight, and his eyes had been restored; they all laughed together, and everything of the past had been forgiven. In the second, he was still in the cave, and Sigyn huddled by the edge of the drop, holding the bowl in her hands, staring into its emptiness.

0o0

The seventh day, he woke feeling strengthened and fortified as he could barely remember being before, and as he dressed he luxuriated in the feeling of magic under his skin. He had concealed its return, taken care not to use it. It was best if they thought him helpless now. His best defense was to appear defenseless. But as he left that place and walked in Asgard, he gathered around himself a seeming of power, for he had spent enough time afraid, and he had much to do.

His first visit was to the Bifrost, and he made his way with far greater confidence in his steps than he had before, although he still went slowly, relying upon the feel of the ground through his staff as much as on his memory of the route. Here and there whispers followed him, but he only smiled.

“Heimdall!” he called in cheerful greeting as he reached the edge of the bridge. He knew he could not surprise the gatekeeper of Asgard, but that did not mean he could not alarm him.

“Loki,” came the calm, implacable answer.

“I have come to tell you this: I have no intention of trying to sneak past you out of Asgard on my way to Hel. I have no intention of forcing or conniving my way onto Bifrost for nefarious purposes. I just thought you should know that you have my solemn promise on that point,” Loki said with a snicker just before he turned and strode away. Let Heimdall puzzle over that and seek out the lie, he thought.

Next on his list was the dwelling of a certain friend of Hodur. Upon reaching it, he made his presence known, hollering and stomping his foot on the threshold and rapping on the door until it was opened.

“Is that you, Winta?” he asked, and waited for the brief stunned silence that said he had his victim. He reached out a hand with a laugh, grasping the man by the shoulder. “I had some trouble finding you, but I’ve had to develop my hearing of late and I was able to remember your voice, given time. After that it was only a matter of asking around. Well, aren’t you going to greet me? I’ve only come to thank you for the gift you so kindly offered, though I’m afraid I’ve lost track of it. It really is not often that anyone would bother to do such a thing for a friend of a friend, especially not after so much time. I was quite touched that you went to the trouble…”

He drew it out, digging his fingers into the meat of Winta’s shoulder and smiling like a man about to commit murder, as Winta stuttered through aimless apologies and promised to convey Loki’s gratitude to his other friends. Then Loki practically skipped away, on to his next target. He could feel his impending doom growing closer with each step, and it felt like a tightness in his chest that was only relieved when he laughed.

Next was Tyr, who he located on the dusty training grounds where the warriors of Asgard sparred and drilled ceaselessly. As he made his way around its edges, he felt countless eyes on him, but he had heard the measured shouts of their commander and he followed them to their source.

“I believe I can answer a question which may have been plaguing you, Tyr,” Loki said as he approached. He could feel the war god’s baleful gaze even without being able to see it; he faced into its fury without flinching. “I’m sure you have wondered—if you are such an expert warrior and tactician with one hand missing, how much better would you be if both hands had been lost? I can answer this query at last. Odin Allfather sacrificed one eye, and he is wise and knows many things. I have lost both, and in return I have been granted insight into far greater secrets—Surely you don’t doubt me? When have I lied about such a thing?—and I’m sure the principle can be applied to you as well. With one hand missing, you are as you are. With both gone you would be a _wonder_.” Suddenly Loki couldn’t help but loose the strained, breathy giggle that had swelled up in his throat before he continued. The tension seething in the air around him was prickling along his skin, and he wondered how long a lone, defenseless, blind sorcerer would last if an entire company of Asgard’s most skilled warriors, all well armed and angry, decided to destroy him. Or whether perhaps they would consider there to be something dishonorable about that. “But let us go further! If both arms were lost to the elbow, perhaps, or to the shoulder? If every piece of you that can be lost were taken, why, I’m sure even the armies of Jotunheim and Hel combined could not hope to defeat you! Shall we go and release my son from his own imprisonment? I’m certain he would be willing to lend his aid to such a noble endeavor, if you wished to find out.”

“It would be best if you stopped speaking, Liesmith,” Tyr said at last through clenched jaws. “Failing that, it would be well for you to take your tongue elsewhere.”

Loki twisted his fingers along the neck of his staff. “Only since you ask so courteously, Tyr,” he answered, his lip curling up in a slow smile.

0o0

He did not get far before the commotion began. It was Asgard; word traveled fastest by mouth, and did so particularly when the gossip being spread was particularly juicy. And so people had begun to come to see for themselves that the trickster had been loosed (perhaps foolishly) and brought back to Asgard and was apparently dropping hints and threats of foul plans, the same as those for which he’d been imprisoned in the first place. They came in small groups that gathered into throngs, to whisper and shout and shove for a chance to watch what would clearly be a spectacle.

Loki heard the growing noise of them, and only then did his giddy anticipation begin to dissolve and shift into something else. The quick-beating thrum of fear. He cast about in the darkness and called out insults, laughing and slapping himself on the leg, the other hand white-knuckled around his staff, the tremble growing almost visible, almost quaking him to the ground on softened knees.

He had needed to know what it would take for them all to turn on him now, finally and fatally, even after they’d tortured and blinded him in the effort to render him harmless. It would have driven him mad to know that it would come but to not know when. Though somehow, even after everything, it still stung to know that it had taken so little. Only a few words.

But then the first strike hit, suddenly and without warning. A sharp cracking thud at the base of his skull that knocked him stumbling forward. Relief washed through him. Lights flashed in his head, bright strings of color exploded, and everything became simple.

All he had to do was run.

0o0

 **11\. Optic Foramen**

He ran.

A rook with pecked-out eyes.  
A blaze-burned stag stumbling through ashes.  
A rabbit with the hound’s teeth at its heels.  
A blind cave-fish lost in the surface pools.

He heard them coming fast behind him. He darted through thorn-bushes, feeling the branches scratching and piercing his skin, feeling the treacherous enemy roots curling and grasping around his feet, and he held one arm up to cover his injured face as the other reached out in front, feeling for the way.

He heard their voices, hunters’ cries. He heard his own too-quick, panicked breaths and the thumping of his heart. Heard his darting footsteps and the high winds above.

He came up short, a dead end, back pressed hard to a stone cliff face. He bared his teeth at the shuffling, baying crowd that he could feel gathering closer, willed a knife into one hand and a flame into the other, waved them out in front of his body in mad terror.

He had known how this would be. He had prepared for it, feared it, awaited it, dreaded it, laughed at it, and finally brought it down upon himself because nothing could be worse than waiting for the end. But he did not want it. He had still, some part of him, dreamed of escape. Of survival. Of freedom.

Two voices cut through the din. Thor said he must return home. Odin told him he should not roam the world free and unwatched. Loki’s heart clenched as he listened, but they were far away, and they were the ones who had brought him to the darkness. They could not save him.

He turned his head this way and that, frantic and instinctive, trying to catch the crowd’s motions through scents and breezes.

Then something touched his arm. Grasped him in an iron grip.

He cried out. Refused.

He would not. He would not be bound again. They would take nothing more from him. No more. Nothing.

The hand gripped tighter and began to pull him away.

At any moment they would tear him to pieces.

And then came the moment he had known to wait for. The deep breath. The moment for which he had saved up all his strength and all his magic and all his will.

His mouth, still open in his scream, poured out light. It crept out from his eyes and seeped through his skin.

A flash. Wind. A pressure wave. All a fuzzy, venomous green.

In that moment, Loki self-destructed, taking Asgard with him.

0o0


	3. Chapter 3

**12\. Optic Chiasm**

The flash faded. The cave was dim-lit as Odin ventured into it, Thor beside him. Too dim to see much beyond the sleek reptilian head hovering near the ceiling and the limp shape bound to the rock slab.

They heard Sigyn before they saw her huddled form by the wall, heard the sound of her harsh, gasping breaths. As she stood, the bowl came loose from her stiff fingers and clattered to the stone floor.

She staggered toward the two of them, and as she approached they saw the tears streaming from her red eyes and the long, bloody lines on her arms and shoulders, the marks of her fingernails where she had been clawing at her own skin.

Thor stared at her, his brother’s wife standing before him in rags that barely covered her skeletal form. How long since she had eaten? He wondered. Her eyes glittered with madness, and as he watched, her mouth opened and closed helplessly, breath hissing past her teeth. Her hair hung limp and dirty on her shoulders. Then before he realized she had moved, she was against him, howling, her balled hands thudding against his chest in an avalanche of blows. She should not have been able to hurt him. Her fists stung where they fell, all fury and tendon and bone.

Odin, wiser, had stepped back and away from them, moving swiftly toward the stone pallet, a sense of deep dread growing in his breast.

He had chained Loki here, certain he would escape. Anyone who knew Loki would know that. It was simply what would happen. And then—Ragnarok.

Instead, now, he saw the faint light glinting off wetness on Loki’s face and he stepped inexorably closer, wading through his own horror.

And he saw.

With his own single eye, he saw the twin rings of blood-red flesh streaked with the pallid yellow of decay, encircling darkness. And in the darkness there was the barest hint of green, the faintest gleam.

Odin bent closer to peer into that darkness, to see what glinted within. And he saw. Instead of leaf-green irises, he saw the snake’s venom, pooled in the place where Loki’s eyes used to be, shivering like faint moonlight in a deep well when another drop fell from above.

Odin pressed a hand against his mouth, but he quickly overcame the wave of nausea and moved forward to touch the bonds that held Loki where he lay. The bonds fell away, releasing him, and his filthy limbs went even more slack.

Odin touched him, feeling for a spark within him, and what he felt almost cut him down. Loki lived, but the poison had eaten its way within him, within his skull, within his veins. Within his mind.

Loki’s body lived, an empty shell, no more than that. And it was only a body that Odin permitted Thor to carry out of the cave minutes later, the anguished wails of Sigyn following them.

The trickster had fallen. Instead of emerging from the cave given power by long confinement, his body twisted into the angles of rage as he rained vengeance upon them all, he had come out as a pale corpse, withered, clutched desperately in Thor’s arms. Thor pressed his forehead against the cold ruin of Loki’s brow. It was Odin’s fault, and Thor’s, they who had decided his punishment and bound him there, although they had done it for the good of all.

All of Asgard watched in silence. No one else wept.

Odin felt anger bloom through his veins. And he thought… perhaps Ragnarok would never come now. Or perhaps Loki would bring it still. Perhaps the twilight had already begun.

 

0o0o0o0o0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you have certainly surmised, the chapter titles, all parts of the visual system, are intended to reflect the contents of the chapters. I may or may not have stolen this idea from Vanessa Place's novel La Medusa.


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